Happy Pi Day

Finally, we have had a few days above freezing.  I rushed out last week and tapped the sugar maples, but they are not really running yet.  Not sure what is happening, if there is too much snowpack, or the temps need to get more above freezing.

I gave up trying to trap the mink and started trying to mink proof the coop.  We had about 6 feet of snow on the ground and zero deree temps, so that took awhile to get that project underway.

I had to disassemble the rabbit hutches I put in many years ago to get to the windows.  That was a very depressing job.

Finally today I enlisted the aid of the Firebird to help close up all the little places, and just getting some positive cooperative energy into the space helped a great deal.  After the negative energy of the slaughter and devastation and having to rebuild something I made years ago I needed some fresh energy.

One of the major things left is to dig out the winter's bedding, which was pretty frozen.  Part of the floor will need to be replaced, and I need to re hang and reframe the door and put up some more 1/2 mesh over a window and a chicken door.

Quite a bit of snow has melted.  So much that I barely made it up the drive in 4WD on Wednesday, because I had about 6inches of slush in the ruts.  Luckily that refroze so  I could get out the next morning, and I think it is still gradually melting since a bit more dirt is showing on one of the shoulders.

Of course we are under a winter storm watch tonight, lots of wet snow, hopefully 4-8 inches , which will still require clearing if we are to get out the drive next week.

Our dirt road is coming unglued in the usual places, and I am starting my annual rant about what the road commissioner does to earn nearly 100K a year.  Can't even put a load of crushed rock in the rutty places, and of course we are the last town to have posted our dirt road to heavy loads, a rite of spring in these parts.

My arm is gradually healing; every time I spend a little bit of time working around here I have a set back.  Looking for part time work, or something independent, with the usual no luck.

I could potentially go back eventually with the beekeeper, but my bud working with him down in Georgia got stung 100 times last week moving hives.  Doesn't sound like much fun.  I figure I had about 50 stings all told, but mistakes happen and once the bees find a way in your suit you can get in a pickle pretty fast.

Our snow here is settling-the tromped paths started to thaw, and that was pretty dangerous because all of a sudden a foot would break through up to over your knee...then it re froze and we have these foot sized pitfalls along the pathways.  If you fall when it is soft you find yourself over your shoulders trying to push yourself upright...

I should lay a bet now when all the snow will be gone off the lawn....May 30?

Happy spring!

Almost Thanksgiving

The weather has been rather cold for bees, but at least we don't have 8 feet of snow on the ground, my sympathies and prayers to Buffalo, New York area!

My co-worker and I, the "outside kitties", have been busy readying the ten frame hives for shipment down south for the winter.

We have been averaging about 5o hives a day.  There are four hives to a pallet, and usually about four pallets to a "bee yard".

The town is a rural Maine farming community, must be good dirt up there, lots of farms, lots of owner builder camps.  Being an architect nut, I have been immensely enjoying driving from bee yard to bee yard on the  back roads.

The weather has been surprisingly compliant compared to the rest of the country; most of the bee yard locations are sheltered, and the early winter sun has made the job not as miserable as it could be.  There is still snow in the shady parts of the fields, but basically just crumbs.

We have a nice pace worked out.  We arrive at the yard and J starts hauling boxes of bee candy.  I grab the riobi drill and start shutting the entrance reducers on the first pallet, then move on to cracking the top covers while J moves on to the entrance reducers on the rest of the pallets.

Cracking the top covers is a bit like Christmas-what's under there? Are there a pile of bees on top of a queen excluder, buzzing and perhaps flying right at my face?  Will  I see a few bees? Will they be the bright yellow Italians, or the dark carniolans? Will I be met with dead silence and have to press my ear against the top of the frames and listen to detect a buzz in the lower super, or with a stillness that determines the hive is an "out"?

Depending on what I discover determines my next course of action.  If there is no queen excluder, I am to carefully place one on top of the frames and then two bricks of candy and then replace the cover.  Sometimes the inside of the cover is covered with honeycomb and bees.  Bees make use of available space, and I have just used that space up with candy and have to remove the comb to replace the cover.

Being a softy, I want to save every bee, even though by this point I usually have at least a dozen trying to get me through the gloves, pants, hood, back....

So I shake the cover over the candy, trying to get the bees off.  The owner can do this magically with a flick of the wrist, but either I am lacking in skill or the bees are just more tenacious when the temps are30 or a combinations of both....it just is not that simple.  So sometimes I lean the cover in front of the entrance while I am placing the candy, and then shake, and then thump a corner on the ground to get them in the corner of the cover so I can shake them in, but they are clinging little creatures and this usually involves several thumps and shakes and on a rare occasion results in a clump of bees on the ground near the entrance.

There was one hive today that I kept returning to, scooping up bees off the ground-they ball up when cold- and trying to shake them into the entrance to save them.  My seniors on the job scoff at this behavior, but in my greeness I feel every bee matters and keep returning to try and save every stray bee, knowing that a bee too long outside the hive will just freeze to death.  I have flicked many off my coat that had died in  place.

Sometimes they burrow into the folds of whatever-and hours later come crawling out of what feels like every orifice ....and  I have bees emerging from my clothes in the car, the grocery store, my home...

Because when you are working the whole day outside in these temps, you dress in layers.  I found my bee coat doesn't quite come down over my hoodies.  The first few days this week I left my bee hood off until I had to, and then bees had worked their way inside the hoods of my coats.  I wear a sleeveless tank long enough to tuck in, a long sleeved shirt, a fleece hooded coat, and two hood sweatshirts and then the bee coat.  I wear a pair of sweatpants and a pair of jeans.  I gave up on the leather bee gloves this week-the sleeves are just a pain to get over the bee coat and they get cold wet and slimy-and wear a pair of insulated gloves. The bees haven't managed to sting through them yet, although they have been trying. 

Generally if I get a lively hive that comes at me, I back off and start flicking them off, hoping they haven't suicided on me yet and might get back to their hive before they freeze to death.

So it's been a lively week...

The Firebird is getting enquires from colleges about soccer recruitement, just not the colleges he has applied/been accepted to.  So I hope wheerever he settles he will be able to continue with soccer.

The Willow has had artwork accepted to hang at the capital.

My freezer is filled with turkeys @ 59 cents a pound.

Turkey turkey turkey.